Changes for Google Search Engine Ranking in 2009

Matt Cutts from Google and Bruce Clay, President of Bruce Clay, Inc., two major players in the search engine optimization (SEO) industry were interviewed last month by Mike McDonald of WebProNews. They discussed the changes in Google search engine ranking and the changes in SERP for 2009. SERP is short for search engine results pages. SEO search marketing continues to evolve for personal and business search results.

The topics Bruce talked about covered the importance of personalization, the devaluation of ranking as the prime metric for SEO, and the role of engagement objects on rankings going forward. Bruce claims Google search engine ranking is dead. He says search engine optimizers will have to rely more on analytics and measure traffic, bounce rate and action closely.

Bruce also said that behavior based search based on search history will now web wide instead of being confined to those logged into Google. Personalized results are due to come out in early 2009. Search engines will follow web visitors by their IP addresses and yielding results based on intent-based searches based on how the site visitor searched previously. Personalization is going to be “web-wide” using third party cookies and things.

Google has been looking up your IP and revising results based on IP. They know where you’re located and can make assumptions about the intent of your search. As you get more into intent-based search, it’s going to change the way pages rank, Bruce explains. “The page that ranks for a shopping query is an entirely different architecture than the page that ranks for a research query.”

Additionally, Bruce talked about Universal Search. Universal search is mostly referred to as showing results based on your previous searches, but this time even if you are not logged into your Google mail account. Universal Search is going to target your search result pages based on previous searches and Local Search results based on IP address. Local search based on IP address is already in place where Google will use IP country ranges to lead you to other Data Centers and gives local and country language specific results.

Search marketing specialist, Bryan Dornan said, “Consumers have come to expect the impossible from Google and until their search technology slows, I think that’s a safe assumption.  Dornan continued, “It only makes sense that Google integrates mobile search with more relevant results.